


Like A Sun, It Burns

by CalamityK



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Falling In Love, Love, M/M, this one is a bit poetic in a way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 08:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10715511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityK/pseuds/CalamityK
Summary: Mila points out that maybe Yuri looks at Otabek a little differently, a bit too long, and a bit too starry-eyed.“When he’s in the room, Yura, you barely have eyes for anything else.”“He’s my best friend.”“He’s your sunlight. You’re brighter when you’re with him.”In a way, Yuri thinks,Otabek does kind of burn like the sun.





	Like A Sun, It Burns

**Author's Note:**

> another unbeta'd rewrite of an old fic I had sitting in my "to improve" queue.  
>   
> Dedicated to Michaela, because even though you hate when I write angst, you still read it.

__

_“Even after all this time, the Sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me."_  
Look what happens with a love like that,  
It lights the whole sky.”   
―  **Hafiz**

 -------------

 

When Yuri was little his grandmother told him stories about how he would one day stumble upon the love of his life.

The stories always featured him finding a soulmate, fantastical and fanciful, and when pressed for evidence of love being profoundly storybook in its nature, she’d always state her and Nikolai as proof.

She led Yuri’s nine-year-old heart to believe finding love would be some grand, ground-shaking event, that his vision would shift, the colors of the world would brighten to pink and yellows, and his soul would suddenly just _know_.

 The way it actually happens is rather ordinary.

 “Get on.”

 The demand comes from a leather clad boy on the back of a motorcycle named _Otabek Altin._

 Yuri hesitates. “Do you think they’ve seen me?”

 “They won’t if you get on.”

 Yuri takes the offered hand, but the Earth stays perfectly still.

\-----------

 They stand over Barcelona as strangers —in an empty groove of the Doric Temple—something reluctant brewing between them.

 There’s something familiar, a nostalgia Yuri can’t place, until Otabek sheds his light on it. They were on the barre together when they were just kids.

 Yuri doesn’t remember, but Otabek does.

 He describes it like an out of body experience.

 “You had the eyes of a soldier.”

 “Me?”

 “Yes, Yuri. You have eyes that are very hard to forget.”

 The city below them carries a promise as they exchange numbers and leave as friends.

\------------

 

They click together with the kindred-ness of interlocking puzzle pieces. The common interest of their sport pulling them toward one another long enough for other similarities to crop up.

Yuri barely notices the way they mesh so easily together; fitting inside each other’s sentences like two halves to a whole. It’s natural; commonplace, and Yuri never thinks too deeply into it.

Then Mila points out that maybe Yuri looks at Otabek a little differently, a bit too long, and a bit too starry-eyed.

“When he’s in the room, Yura, you barely have eyes for anything else.”

 “He’s my best friend.”

 “He’s your sunlight. You’re brighter when you’re with him.”

  _In a way_ , Yuri thinks, _Otabek does kind of burn like the sun._

\------------

 

There’s an interlude of slow sparks; skype calls, hurried texts and meeting on and off the podium.

There’s a solid year of Yuri figuring things out.

Then there’s slivers of confessions, one by one, fizzling from his lips like microscopic housefires.

Otabek pieces them together, but says nothing.

He doesn’t need to. He’s been waiting for Yuri to catch up, and finally Yuri does.

\------------

 

Their first kiss tastes like match fire.

The hot press of Otabek’s lips—chapped, rough, unyielding—striking off of Yuri’s own, leaving trails of spark and flame in their wake. It burns Yuri to the core, and finally he understands his grandma’s stories.

The honk of a horn is the only thing that breaks them apart, reminding them they’re on a street in a foreign city, with a competition looming over their heads tomorrow morning.

“What was that for?” Yuri asks, one of Otabek’s hands still cupping his jaw.

“Don’t know.” Otabek’s eyes are brown, but Yuri sees the street lights around them reflect in the irises like an orange morning sky. “I just felt like it.”

Yuri suddenly feels a lot of things.

Predominantly he feels warm, like he’s been wrapped up and lost to thin pink lips, dark brown hair and honey-tan skin.

Like he wants to venture further; dive into Otabek the way he would a new routine.

He settles for twining his fingers between the larger notches of Otabek’s left hand, and smiling as they walk against the November wind.

\------------

It slows down again, just for a while, but it stays new; exciting.

Stolen kisses are exchanged at competitions, and extra brushes of fingers are added whenever they’re near.

It’s not enough for the press to notice, but it’s _enough_.

They visit each other’s rinks, and spend the off season on Otabek’s motorbike; Yuri’s head resting between Otabek’s shoulders as they drive to cities they’ve only ever passed through. 

 _It feels nice to explore_ , Yuri thinks, _both the world and each other_.

\------------

In no time, it’s winter again and Yuri’s chest feels like it’s expanding; burning and bursting and filling with each inhale he takes of Otabek’s cologne.

The season’s starting. Otabek’s about to get on a plane.

Yuri doesn’t want to let him go, not even when he hears the tell-tale click of cameras starting around them. They won’t be front page news so it doesn’t matter anyway.

“Move in with me.”

“ _Yura.”_

“Yakov can coach you. Transfer rinks. Move in with me.”

The words are caught somewhere between being desperate pleas, and heartfelt demands.

Otabek holds Yuri a bit tighter.

“Decisions like that take time, Yura.”

“Don’t you want it too?”

“Yes.”

“Then do it. _Please, Beka_.”

There’s a moment where neither of them seems to breathe, then Yuri feels Otabek’s exhale blow across his temple. His flight gets called somewhere overhead, but still neither moves.

“Maybe I will.”

\------------

The second week of February is cold.

They combat the chill with the red heat of each other’s names whispered into skin, the slick of sweat, and tangled sheets that whisper _home_.

Yuri watches Otabek slip into the chair across from him, sliding a steaming cup of chamomile across the kitchen table. Yuri takes it, enjoying the way their fingers mingle.

It’s _their_ kitchen and _their_ table, and the moment feels kind of perfect. Otabek’s mussed hair is falling into his eyes, and down over his ears, and the nips and bites trailed along Yuri’s jaw are still burning.

They ache like passion, and make him feel whole in a way even skating doesn’t.

“Beka.”

“Yeah.”

 “I think I love you."

Otabek smiles and sips his own drink.

Yuri thinks the Earth might finally shift a little.

\------------

“I love you too.”

It’s March before Yuri hears it as more than just an echo at night, when they’re alone and Otabek thinks he’s asleep.

The words sink in tightly, settling somewhere just above his stomach and just below his heart. The butterflies that had waited there with baited breath, sigh and fly away.

He finds himself planning a routine to this emotion.

It’s only interrupted when Otabek trails his ribs with kiss after kiss and says it again, over and over until it vibrates through Yuri’s bones.

“I love you.”

\------------

That summer is another cliché; a spontaneous road trip and a last minute stop in Spain.

Park Güell looks the same in the rain, and Yuri wonders why Otabek is so adamant that they stay out in this weather.

It’s not until they’re back atop the Temple that he figures it out.

Otabek takes a knee in the same spot they stood on the day they met.

Rain is sluicing off his cheekbones and plastering his hair to his forehead, and Yuri absorbs every detail as he watches Otabek sink to the ground.

He barely hears the question before he’s shouting.

 “So, this is why we had to come today, even though it’s fucking raining!”

Otabek nods. “But will you marry me, Yura? You haven’t said yes.”

The ring is simple and silver, one stone for each of their birth months, but it fits over Yuri’s knuckle and glints with a promise of forever.

“Yes _.”_

Then they’re kissing, until Yuri can taste the rain more than he can taste Otabek’s tongue.

 _A cliché_ , Yuri thinks, _has never felt so good_.

\------------

They’re well into the next year, and the next season when Yuri notices that something’s not quite right.

Otabek’s favoring his left knee, and both his hips, and he never wants to talk about it.

“You can’t avoid it forever. What if it gets worse?”

“Then I’ll retire.” Otabek’s tone is clipped, and he unlaces his skates a bit faster.

It suddenly feels like they’re escaping each other, all the things they should be saying going up in smoke.

Yuri fights desperately to quell his sinking gut.

\------------

In December Otabek’s knee gives out. It halts at the last second during a spin, like a car trying to stop last-minute at a traffic light.

Yuri watches from the sidelines as the paramedics haul him out.

It feels like an end because it is.

\------------

Yuri doesn’t realize how much time they spend together until they don’t.

Sometimes they don’t speak for days at a time when Yuri’s competing.

He’s off collecting medals while Otabek collects surgical scars, and neither one wants the reminder.

 _Somehow_ , Yuri thinks, _somehow they’ll survive it_.

\------------

Lately, Otabek smells like cinnamon and menthol cigarettes. It’s a strange smell on him—spiced, acrid and foreign—it burns Yuri’s throat when he breathes against the back of Otabek’s neck at night.

It stings his eyes as he runs his fingers down each individual knot of Otabek’s spine, counting his worries with each one.

Otabek never turns to face him like he used to, but he still reaches down and pulls the duvet over them both.

Yuri sinks under it with a familiar ease and pretends not to notice that something’s still not quite right.   

\------------    

Their first real fight—their only face-to-face fight—is like an ice storm.

Otabek’s words embed into Yuri’s skin the way skate blades embed into a fresh rink, leaving gashes in each separate chamber of his heart.

“I don’t understand.”     

“Yura.”

“I love you.”

“I just can’t do this anymore.”  

It feels like the Earth sinks away below Yuri’s feet.

He grabs for Otabek’s hand, and finds only a mild resistance.

“Beka, I love you. Can’t we fix this?”

Otabek doesn’t answer, just twists the ring on Yuri’s finger sadly—regretfully—doesn’t take it off or ask for it back.

Yuri feels his final heartstring sever.

\------------

The end of April finds Otabek packing out boxes and taking a piece of Yuri with each one.

Yuri leaves as an alternative to staying and watching his life get picked apart by the only person who made it whole.

One of his flights gets cancelled, and he ends up in Barcelona on accident.

Park Güell looks the same in the sun, but Yuri wishes it didn’t.

He finds himself climbing up to sit on the temple ledge; legs dangling over the city and eyes burning with unshed tears.

He remembers his grandmother’s fairytales.

She built love up to be this brilliant, shining thing, but in the end its just kind of ordinary.

Yuri twists the ring on his finger one final time before he takes it off.

It glints like a shooting star when he chucks it toward the setting sun.

 _In a way_ , Yuri thinks, _it burns brighter than Otabek ever did_.

**Author's Note:**

> Sigh. I broke my own rule of angst fic. "They can die but they can never break up."  
> Oops.
> 
> Yell, scream, and demand things of me at [kingotabek](http://kingotabek.tumblr.com/faq)


End file.
